Earth Day 2010: Love and life

Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment.

22 April 2010: Earth Day

It is almost midnight.

Earth Day is only minutes away from being over. Another day, has passed and like in so many things that are subject to time, this day now becomes part of my memories and are now recorded as a chapter in my life.

I am more than glad that this remembrance of Earth Day was done with the celebration of the life of a dear person with whom I count myself fortunate to have as a friend .

Perhaps it is safe to say that in as far as speaking about Earth Day and the need to uphold the urgent struggle of safeguarding the environment, the celebration of Earth Day and the work for those in the environmental movement must always be reflected in the context of love for life –and I am not talking here about token sentimentally about Mother Nature, nor am I simply being a bleeding heart for the cute and cuddly animals, nor am I romanticizing my love for the outdoors –far from it!

While it is true that the aforementioned things are part of the things that bear weight in my decision to commit myself to my work with Greenpeace, a larger part of me recognizes the resolute urgency of taking action for the environment lies in the love that can be found in life that is shared in relationships –relationships that can be found in that of parents, grandparents, children, siblings, relatives friends, comrades, kindred spirits and lovers.

Earlier I have said that Earth Day here at our office in the Philippines was a double celebration for it is also today that our resident Online Evangelist celebrates another year in her life. Perhaps, this is how Earth Day ought to be remembered --as a celebration of life that is centered on the call to be human: to stand in a unique relationship to one another, and to the ecosystem upon which our diversity as individuals are complimentary elements that constitute to making life in the here and now worth living.

As another friend of mine wrote about Greenpeace and its oddball passion for creative confrontation:

“Love is a feeling that begs to be expressed, it gains personality in direct action – in “cutting out the middleman” and taking an agentic role in defense of that which is held sacred. Loving nature then entails deviance because truly loving something requires one to fight for it and to constantly navigate mechanisms that make this defense possible when traditional channels are blocked, or when the defense itself is proscribed by law.“1

Perhaps this Earth Day is to be remembered as that day when again we are reminded of that important place of love in the great work that is cut out for us, and like in all things that is put in reference to love: actions speak louder than words.